Kathy Thornton-Bias, new CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee
“I’m running one of the most important businesses in the city,” said Kathy Thornton-Bias, the Milwaukee Boys & Girls Clubs’ new CEO. “I’m in the business of helping children succeed, the business of changing lives one at a time.” Born and raised in Louisville, Ky., a 30-year resident of Manhattan and a Milwaukeean for the past two and a half years, she was hired in late February. Our conversation took place on her “46th amazing glorious day” on the job.
How did you come to this position?
My name was passed by different people to the trustees, and I received a call from the Chicago recruiting firm they’d hired. I came to Milwaukee for another role, working for Marcus investments. I’ve spent most of my professional career in Manhattan in the retail industry. New York was an eye-opening experience, one that I really valued in terms of getting my corporate skills and little bit of grit. You can’t be faint-of-heart and survive there. It takes lots of energy—that kind of pushing to get on the subway, elbowing your way through life. As I’ve gotten older and maybe mellowed a bit, that’s not where I want to focus my energy. I want to focus it on things that actually leave a legacy, that leave the world better than I found it, that help someone along the way.
How do you see the role of the Clubs?
As the largest agency serving youth in Greater Milwaukee, I believe it’s our obligation to lead our community through some very choppy waters. It’s our responsibility to be a good community partner, not just with the community but also with the other agencies that are serving in that community. I very much believe in a collaborative operating model. Instead of working in silos, we are now going to work much more horizontally, partnering with agencies who can add benefits and services, agencies that have very precise expertise in a thing we don’t have expertise in. By coming together, we can have much greater relevance and much greater impact. We’re the largest Boys & Girls Club in the country. We get access to almost 50,000 kids a year. I think donors and foundations and other philanthropists are looking for someone to lead in this idea of being collaborative, of reaching out to our brother and sister agencies and talking about services we can combine to get more reach.
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You’re a businesswoman, then.
There’s always been this uncomfortable tension between the idea of running a business and having a mission-based organization, if those things are viewed as mutually exclusive. My business outcomes aren’t about how many pairs of shoes I sell next week. It’s how many children I get to graduate high school, how many kids I get to college or trade school or community college. It’s about families being transformed because kids are becoming educated and have options. Our job, first of all, is to provide a really safe place for kids after school, but we don’t do this in a bubble. That’s why if we lock arms and do the lifting together with our partners—like MPS, the United Way, the list goes on—it becomes much more feasible. We’re still going to be great providers of educational enrichment and tons of fun. We do that better than anyone. We need to work with other agencies and do other things that our kids need, as well.
Can you spend time with the kids?
What I do to get money or create endowments or organize programs, those are operating tasks. The work, our product, is in serving the consumers that happens to be 18 and under. They’re my customers. So, I need to be really close—using a retail mindset—to know who my customers are, where they are, what their needs are, what they like about what I’m doing, what they don’t like. I’m spending as much time as humanly possible in our clubs and our camp, asking the kids, reading to the kids, making swans with the kids—things I never thought would be part of my day job. They are joyous beyond belief. And spending time with the teams. We have a great group of people. They go above and beyond on a daily basis that just floors me. They will do anything for the kids and the families that we serve. When you work with people like that and see their passion, it’s infectious.
